Our farm is narrow and long, divided by a big semi-circle of Elkhorn Creek. To drive all the way through the farm when I was a child, you had to open and close eight gates. There were 28 gates altogether between the fields, east to west, north to south.
Those gates were very important. They kept livestock out of the corn, hay, gardens, or tobacco. They separated the weaned calves from their mothers. They kept the livestock off Switzer Road and out of Elkhorn Creek. They enabled us to “change pastures” every 2-3 weeks in the summer, so cattle got the pleasure of the “greener grass” on the other side of the fence.
Nothing made my father madder than for someone to go through the farm and leave a gate open. He let neighbors come fish, but if anybody left a gate open more than once, they had to park by our house and walk to the creek. If a hired man left a gate open, he lost his job. It used to be my job to open and close those gates when Daddy and I would drive through the farm after supper to check cattle and admire or worry over crops. I took the responsibility seriously. If gates were left open and cattle went where they were not supposed to be, lots of bad things could happen.
Calling Livestock Through
But then there was the matter of getting cattle through gates if it was more than just moving them to the next field. From time to time they would need to come into the corral to be doctored, tagged, examined—and sometimes sold. It was not so easy to get cattle through the gate if they thought we might be going to the corral.
But they knew Daddy’s voice. He talked to them all the time—as he fed them in the winter, when we drove through the fields to check on them on warm summer nights, when he found a new calf, when he had to pull a calf. He talked. Not ALWAYS nicely. But he talked. And they knew his voice.
Daddy could always call them through the first gate—even to the corral.
All of this is background for the Gospel today. In our urban and suburban culture, gates are not so very important. They let us through to the subway, in or out of a parking lot, maybe in or out of our backyard, but they are not essential to our lives.
Jesus at Gatekeeper and Gate
Gates were essential in Jesus’ day, especially if you were a shepherd and cared for livestock. Often, at night, several shepherds would share a sheepfold. They would take turns watching through the night, so everybody got some sleep. In the morning, each shepherd would go out through the gate and call his sheep. They would organize around their shepherd like first graders gathering around their teacher at the end of recess.
In today’s Gospel Jesus builds on his listeners’ common knowledge of that process. He says,
But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice,
as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has driven out all his own,
he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him,
because they recognize his voice.
Sheep—or cattle—do not respond to the voice of a stranger. They turn their heads and look. It seems they are thinking. Then they put their heads back down to graze or stare off in space. But they do not follow.
And if there is movement by a stranger that calls alarm, cattle will take off to the FARRRRRR corner of the field. And they do their best to balk at the gate, sometimes turning away again and again.
Jesus talks about that, too.
So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and robbers,
but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
It is in that context that Jesus’ words, “I am the gate” has held me this week. It isn’t just that Jesus is the shepherd: Jesus is also the gate. Or, as Jesus says later in John’s Gospel, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.”
In Context
It might help to put this Scripture in context. The whole 10th chapter of John works around the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We had part of it as the very short Gospel yesterday. But the part we read yesterday comes at the end of the chapter and happens some months after today’s discussion. Today’s presentation of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is a continuation of the story of Jesus healing the blind man that we had on the 4th Sunday of Lent. The Pharisees gave Jesus a hard time about that all through the 9th chapter of John. Today’s reading begins John 10. It is part of the same conversation about healing the blind man—and the church leaders inability to see Jesus as THE WAY, THE GATE.
Jesus loved the scribes and Pharisees, too. He kept trying to help them understand. They were even slower to get it than the disciples.
Sunday’s reading seems to go with today’s conversation, but it is from a later conversation when the Pharisees ask Jesus, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answers them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.” THEN Jesus begins yesterday’s reading: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them….”
Application
Because Jesus is both Good Shepherd and the gate, he provides an additional level of help to us today as we listen to the multiple voices in church and culture who claim to be good shepherds. Are they good shepherds? Do they speak with the voice of Jesus?
Good questions.
Yes, that would apply to popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests. But it also applies to writers, commentators on secular and religious TV, and those who post on Facebook or YouTube. Everybody (including me!) has an opinion, and with the touch of some buttons on our computer we can “call the sheep” across the world.
As I am a sheep, I need to listen for the voice of Jesus. I need to examine a gate and see if it is a Jesus gate. Does it do what Jesus did? Does it sound like Jesus?
In ministry and writing, I serve as a shepherd. I need to examine my own voice to make sure it matches the voice of Jesus, that it leads people through the Jesus gate.
Prayer
Lord, I am a sheep. You are the shepherd, the good shepherd. Help me to distinguish your voice today. Post-resurrection, disciples had to look and listen closely to recognize Jesus. Lord, today give me the grace to know when it is you. And sometimes, Lord, I am a shepherd. Let me only speak as you would speak, lead as you would and do lead. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
